Archive: Site News

First, the second appearance by a photobooth, this time a real Model 14, in the show “The Big C.” Thanks to Anthony for the tip on this scene, in which one character protests “photobooth discrimination.”

I’ve been catching up on the excellent new show “Girls” lately, and Hannah (Leah Dunham) and Marnie (Allison Williams) have at least three photostrips in their apartment, as seen in episodes 2 and 5:

I finally came across a copy of the Weird Al Biography from A&E, in which we see a number of photobooth photos of a young, not yet weird Al with his mom.

Thanks again to Anthony for telling us about the episode of American Pickers with Jack White in which the guys trade a mounted elephant head for one of Jack’s photobooths (you’ve got to see it to believe it).

I’ve also added updated, higher quality images for some of the first TV shows I posted to the site back in 2005: Roswell (I had no idea that was Katherine Heigl…), As Time Goes By, and The X-Files.

In the world of commercials, I spotted one running on ESPN a few days ago, an ad for Corona Light featuring the adventures of everyman Stan, shown in a series of still photos. Once Stan has a Corona Light, his life gets more interesting, and he finds himself in a photobooth. Of course.

And finally, thanks to Siobhan for tipping us off to two ads (adverts, I suppose) from the UK, for the TV show “Take Me Out,” and for Thinkbox, an ad which stars Harvey and Rabbit.

Now that the Convention is over, the art has been returned, the wrap-up has been written, and my office is getting back to normal, I’ve had a chance to uncover a lot of updates and contributions that I hadn’t had a chance to post in the last few months. Over the next few days, I’ll be making note of all of the new content on the site, starting today with Movies.

First, we have Christopher Nolan’s first feature film, Following (1998), which features a photostrip. Thanks to Russ for the tip.

Our friend Tara tipped us off to a photobooth in Step Up 3, where two characters take refuge to get away from a dance club fight.

Thanks as well to found photobooth pioneer Dick Jewell for letting us know about a photostrip spotted in Danis Tanovic’s film L’enfer.

And finally, I’ve updated the entry for The Mambo Kings with higher quality images for the film’s photobooth sequences. The film uses a nice booth and even makes photostrips into an editing tool, so I’m happy to have been able to replace the horrible VHS transfers from 2004 with new stills from DVD.

As we look back on everything that happened during last week’s International Photobooth Convention, we’ll be posting recaps of all of the events that took place, the people we met, and the experiences we had during the three days. It was an ambitious event, and we used the occasion to debut a few of own contributions to the world of photobooth media. We’ll now be making those items, namely the convention poster and the Photomaton 25th anniversary catalog, available to the public.

Our poster is a beauty, designed by Jared Purrington and printed at Level Press in Los Angeles on French Paper. The poster is signed and numbered in a limited edition of 100. The poster is $20 plus postage and handling.

The poster will be shipped to you rolled in a sturdy tube.

The catalog for the PHOTOMATON 25th Anniversary show is a professionally printed and bound 36-page work that combines original biographies and artwork from the original 1987 catalog, which is now quite scarce, with updated information and images on every artist who participated in the original show. The catalog is also in a limited edition of 100, and is $15 plus shipping and handling.

Choose US/Canada or International and then click the image to purchase the item. I’m happy to ship multiple copies of either or both items, but due to the fact that the poster will be shipped in a tube, we need to charge separate shipping costs for each type of item. Please with any questions. If you’ve written me before to reserve an item, I have them set aside for you, but please click through the PayPal links to set up payment and provide me with your shipping address.

We are very pleased today to announce the 2012 International Photobooth Convention, which will be held at Electric Lodge in Venice, California, May 18 and 19, 2012. It’s been almost three years since our last event in Chicago, and with all of the exciting stuff going on in the world of photobooths, we’re ready for another convention. Just as in previous years, the event will be a low-key gathering featuring photobooth art, workshops, lectures, projects, and of course, free photochemical photobooths.

We’re still in the early planning stages of the event, but we wanted to make the announcement and let people know with as much lead time as possible. Check back on the Convention page, on our Facebook page for the event, and on our Twitter feed for updates as they become available. We very much hope some of our readers will be able to join us in California for the event, but if not, never fear, it will be well documented on our site as it happens.

Feel free to contact us with any questions about the convention, and stay tuned for more news as we get closer to the date.

With the help of Tim in St. Louis and Anthony in Chicago, I got my photobooth up and running in time for our big birthday party. It was a huge hit at the party, and we have a guestbook full of photos and messages from happy party-goers. Having a photograph taken with my daughter wearing a “1” hat on her first birthday made all of the time and effort worthwhile.

This week, I switched out the roof that the booth arrived with for the more stylish curved roof, still authentic to the Model 14 but not original to this particular booth.

This weekend, I painted part of the main wall with magnetic paint and gave it a frame to create a board where we can put up all of our photostrips.

And now I’ve finally got an appropriate home for a gift Tim gave me awhile back, an original photobooth display glass, nicely framed.

Finally, this week I learned from Raul at Foto-Mat that my photobooth wasn’t as new to me as I thought. In fact, almost six years ago, in August of 2005, I sat in this very booth and took a strip of photos when it was located at Big Fun in Cleveland, Ohio. It’s come full circle, this machine.

As we were finishing up construction of the photobooth shed, I had been preparing the pathway — uneven, half dirt, half concrete, and potentially treacherous — for the move-in. When the day finally arrived yesterday for the booth to be delivered, I started the day by heading out to rent the necessary tools: a set of “Roll-or-Kari” piano moving dollies and a J-Bar, a.k.a. Dutchman Dolly (a.k.a. Johnson Bar or J-Bar).

I was given a time slot of 8 a.m. to noon for delivery; naturally, the truck showed up at 1:30 p.m. The driver was able to back it up into the driveway, and so began the somewhat frightening process of getting a 900 lb. booth and pallet off the truck using the lift gate.

After work last night, my friends Keith and Eric came over to lend a hand, and we got to work disassembling the high-quality pallet the booth came on, getting the booth off the pallet, and getting it onto the Roll-or-Karis. From there, it was a pretty straight shot through the gate and down the path into the shed.

Getting the 30-inch wide booth through the 32-inch doorway was tight, but I don’t think we hit anything, and no one lost any fingers, so it was a success. I was surprised, actually, how smoothly it went; we were done just an hour and 15 minutes after we started. We pushed and pulled the booth into the corner of the space, and stood back to admire our work.

Last night and this morning, I worked with Tim over FaceTime to get the transmission aligned (which involved my first problem, first diagnosis, and first bonehead mistake, none of which will be the last), and I’m hoping to get to picture-taking tonight.

Today, I cleaned off all of the old (and conflicting) price stickers, as well as lots of layers of tape, stickers of hearts and cats (where has this booth been?), and some other gunk.

I also moved the sweet late-‘60s sign from the right side of the booth against the wall to the left side, where it can be seen in all its glory.

It’s been a few weeks since we’ve posted about what’s new on the site, so here it is, a little bit of everything. First, a new booth location, The Long Room in Chicago, a booth we’ve long heard of but hadn’t had an official submission yet. Thanks, Chris.

We also caught the photostrip appearance in Joe Wright’s latest film Hanna, after receiving tips from Joe and Raul about it. Once the film is out on DVD, we’ll add it to the site.

For photobooth fans in Florida, Fotomaton.org’s “Selections 1.1″ exhibition is still on display at Karma Cream in Gainesville. We mentioned it back in February and hope some of our readers have had a chance to visit. If not, you’ve still got time, as the show will run at least into June. Again, the show features works by Meags Fitzgerald (Canada), Jena Ardell (U.S.), Verdi Yahooda (U.K.), and Odile Marchoul (Belgium). Thanks to Aran for the update.

Photobooth photos made the news recently, as the priciest example of photobooth art was sold this month: an Andy Warhol work titled “Self-Portrait.” Brett Gorvy of Christie’s provided some background on the piece in an article titled The Birth of Cool: Andy Warhol, Self-Portrait, 1963–1964.

Andy Warhol’s four-paneled Self-Portrait, 1963–1964, is acclaimed in every Warhol monograph and exhibition catalogue as his first seminal self-portrait. It ranks not only as one of the most iconic and enigmatic portrayals of an artist’s own image, but its multi-panel format and use of mechanically-produced photographic imagery are also acknowledged as the most radical advancements in portraiture since Cubism.

The piece, as was reported in the Wall Street Journal, Vending Times and elsewhere, went for $38.4 million, and, as the Journal noted, a “similar self-portrait comprising a single image from this photo-booth series in red sold for $6.8 million, just over its $6 million low estimate.” All in all, not a bad day for the humble 25¢ photobooth.

Also, thanks to Tim for pointing out my appearance on “Jeopardy!” last month. It was a lot of fun, and though I didn’t have the chance to name drop Photobooth.net, I did get asked by Alex about my proposal to my wife in the photobooth at the Musee Mecanique .

As you may have noticed, we recently battled our way through another security failure that brought our site to a halt for a few days. We thank you for your patience and for bearing with us as we worked to get everything back in order. As always, please let us know about any photobooth news, location updates, or other stuff you think we’d be interested in.

We’ve been busy dealing with some behind-the-scenes issues on the blog lately, but that hasn’t slowed our continuing effort to add to our ever-growing catalog of photobooths in popular culture and in the world at large.

First, we have a major update to our listings for the city of Portland. The city seems like a hospitable home for photochemical photobooths, but this hasn’t always been the case. Back when I visited the city in 2004, we were only able to find but one working photobooth in town. Just a few years later, things have changed in a big way, and Portland now ranks with Chicago and New York as an American photobooth capital.

Thanks to Victoria for sending us photos and information for these these seven new photobooth locations:

The newspapers of Australia’s Fairfax Media Limited have hit the stands today with a one-two punch of photobooth-related stories by reporter Lindy Percival. First, the bad news: in The Age, Percival interviews Melbourne photobooth proprietor Alan Adler in a piece titled “Future of the old photo booth not so picture perfect” (archived on our site here). Adler, who has been running photochemical booths in Melbourne for nearly 40 years, sees the end of the business in sight, saying “We’re having trouble getting paper at the moment. I’ve got a couple of months’ supply and I’m hoping I get some more, but it’s becoming very expensive … We’ll keep going for another couple of years probably. But I’d sooner be playing with my grandchildren than playing with photo booths.” Here’s hoping he keeps up the booths as long as he can; we know those machines have a lot of fans (see our Melbourne listings here, here, and here).

Then, of course, there’s the good news. In a companion piece in the Sydney Morning Herald called “The strip of a lifetime” (archived here), Percival writes about the enthusiasts and artists who are still using the photochemical booths today, with a timely look at Raynal Pellicer’s book Photobooth: The Art of the Automatic Portrait (which we’ll review soon) and a mention of our site as well. Australia’s photobooths are some of the furthest-flung examples of the photochemical machine still in use today, cherished by locals and sought out by visitors, and we hope renewed interest thanks to these articles will help them continue well into the future.